Educator’s Perspective: Walk, Then Run

Building an Ecosystem of Proficiency Across Multiple Language Programs

As the recently promoted chair of our school’s World Languages department, I’ve been thinking a lot about the kind of culture I want to engender in our 13 teacher “found family.” Teachers are a weird bunch to manage, since most of our work time is spent in a classroom with at most one other adult. Our craft is entirely practiced in secrecy, and often experienced by the unappreciative! Plus, aside from the lack of visibility of and by our colleagues, there are also questions of popularity amongst students, rumored differences in individual instructors’ ‘difficulty,’ and varied levels of experience among colleagues. And finally, depending on the popularity (or perceived utility) of your language program, teachers might also be fighting for their position by ensuring their idiomatic program appeals to and draws students enough to continue filling classrooms. So it’s quite hard to establish a through line that both honestly includes these perceptions while also establishing a belonging spirit of “we’re all on the same team here.” Continue reading

Turning Data into Direction: What Our First Year with AAPPL Taught Us

It may have been a few years since your language department implemented an ACTFL assessment in the effort to better understand your students’ language ability. As a teacher whose school has just completed its pilot year of offering the AAPPL to our students, we are definitely still learning about how this new tool will affect how our students set goals for their learning and how our faculty engages with them.  However, I can already see the long-term value of this practice of creating touchpoints and tangible standards for which our students can strive. Continue reading

Leading the Future: Why Language Education Belongs at the Center of College and Career Readiness

Superintendents and school leaders today are asked to do more than simply manage systems. They are expected to make students future-ready, align learning to real-world demands, and ensure every graduating student is prepared for what comes next.

In this work of future-proofing education, where does language fit?

In fact, language education is one of the most powerful, albeit the most underestimated, tool to make learners college and career ready.

Current Reality: A Serious Disconnect

Across industries, employers are signaling the same message: multilingual employees are in demand. Healthcare, technology, education, hospitality, law enforcement, government… nearly every sector of the economy is seeking professionals that can communicate across languages and cultures.

Is our language education preparing students to fill the pipeline?

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Assignments in the Real World

At Back to School Night and during Parent Teacher Conferences, the single most asked question that I am asked is some iteration of the following: “How can my child become fluent in the language they’re studying? What else can they do?”

My instinct is always to horrify them by suggesting their son or daughter should grab a backpack and go live in the country where the target language is spoken; fellow language educators know this is the single most effective manner of gaining proficiency in a language that isn’t one’s own native tongue. I know these parents would have preferred a canned answer that includes popular language learning apps, or movies and music, but the reality of linguistic proficiency is that it’s tied to communicative uses in situations that feel authentic, and come with a healthy mix of safety, challenge, and relevance to our students.

So, what are some ways we can orchestrate learning experiences that activate proficiency in our students? Here are just a few that I’ve have proven effective and authentic.

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English Proficiency on Construction Sites: A Critical Safety Standard

English proficiency on construction sites improves construction site safety communication

Walk onto any construction site and you’ll hear a chorus of activity—power tools buzzing, cranes beeping, backup alarms sounding, and foremen calling out instructions over the roar of engines and heavy equipment. It’s a fast-moving, high-risk environment where every word matters.

That’s why English proficiency on construction sites is more than a helpful skill—it’s a critical safety requirement. Clear communication directly impacts accident prevention, OSHA compliance, and overall job-site performance. When instructions, warnings, or emergency procedures are misunderstood, the consequences can be severe.

In the construction industry, language is not just about convenience. It is about construction site safety, productivity, and lives.

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From Elective to Essential: How AAPPL Testing Elevates World Languages

For years, world language teachers have lived on the fringes of data-driven education. In most schools, English, math, and science departments shape their instruction around benchmark testing while elective departments like ours are left out of the conversation.

But that doesn’t mean our classrooms are any less rigorous or our instruction any less important. World language teachers can, and should, use data to validate and strengthen our programs. The AAPPL has become one of the most powerful tools to do exactly that.

When Professional Development Doesn’t Fit

If you’re a world language teacher in a small district or a department of one, you know the feeling. Professional development days are often built for literacy standards, math frameworks, or science labs. We sit there trying to translate the ideas into something that makes sense in our classrooms.

Our pedagogy rarely takes center stage. AAPPL has given me a way to take control of my own professional growth. The data provides clear information about student performance and proficiency that I can actually use. It gives me what I’ve always wanted: a way to improve instruction based on real evidence instead of guesswork.

AAPPL data allow world language teachers to join the same kind of conversations that administrators expect from “core” subject areas. AAPPL allows us to speak the language of data that school leaders understand and value, even if they don’t have a background in language acquisition.

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Strategies Considering DLE Standards and ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines

Have you ever wondered how you can integrate the information in the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines – 2024 (Guidelines) and the ACTFL Performance Descriptors into your Dual Language Education (DLE) or Dual Language Immersion (DLI) curriculum? Are you trying to meet DLE standards and also want to ensure you’re targeting performance descriptors at specific language proficiency levels?

Start with the End in Mind

Consider mapping out the standards you are targeting in a lesson or unit. Based on the theory of backward design (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005), start with the end in mind.

  1. What is the desired output or evidence of learning you want from your students?
  2. From there, consider what learning outcomes will help you achieve that target.
  3. Finally, build the learning activities and assessments that will guide your students along the path to the desired outcomes.

If you are working to align your program with the Guidelines and a proficiency focus generally, keep that alignment across the board – in your learning objectives, assessments (e.g., ACTFL Assessment of Performance toward Proficiency in Languages, or AAPPL), learning activities, professional development, etc.

As you do this planning, consider what modes of communication will be part of your learning activities. Here’s a sample scope and sequence that could be for a grade 9 DLE/DLI Language Arts class, illustrating how NCSSFL/ACTFL can-do statements and related performance tasks align DLE standards.

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Bilingual Incentive Pay and What It Means for Your Students

As increased emphasis is put on the economic advantages of specific coursework, some language educators may feel like the value of courses in the humanities is being undermined. However, a look at workforce needs and trends reveals language ability is not just a nice-to-have; in many cases, it’s a necessity. Industries such as state and local government, healthcare, tourism, finance, law, and technology need multilingual employees. In fact, 1 in 4 US employers report lost business due to lack of language skills among their employees (Making Languages Our Business Report). Beyond facing the need for multilinguals in the workplace, employers in several industries are beginning to offer compensation benefits specifically for bilingual roles.

Pull up quote asking questions about incentive pay to raise awareness among educators

What Research Tells Us

A recent 2024 survey of 319 corporate and government organizations revealed how bilingual incentive pay is applied across industries. With growing demand for multilingual employees, many organizations recognize the value of financial incentives to reward these critical skills. The insights gathered from this survey shed light on current trends and employer practices, related to bilingual incentive compensation. Here are a few highlights.

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Beyond Chatbots: Ethical Machine Scoring Innovation for the Spanish AAPPL PW

What is the difference between machine scoring systems and chatbots?

The term Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a buzzword used in various businesses, organizations, and media in general. Many have warned about the dangers of using such a phrase as a blanket term to describe technologies that are not truly AI, as it tends to mislead the public about what AI is and what their expectations should be (The AI Buzzword Trap, n.d.). In the same vein, there has been a trend to equate AI to chatbots like ChatGPT. This is not uncommon even among academics (Jordan, 2019). In a recent Applied Linguistics academic conference, there were a total of 40 presentations related to the search term “Artificial Intelligence” out of which about 31 were about generative AI or chatbots, like ChatGPT.

AI is much bigger than chatbots. In fact, AI encompasses a variety of technologies that enable machines to perform tasks requiring human-like intelligence. Self-driving cars are a real-world example of AI technology that is beyond chatbots. Just like when training a human to drive safely, the machine is trained to recognize traffic signs, avoid obstacles, make decisions at intersections, and overall follow the traffic regulations. With the help of (1) sensors that gather millions of data points on what is ahead, beside, or behind, (2) software that processes all these data points collected through the sensors, and (3) machine learning that recognizes patterns in the data points collected to support the machine in improving their driving,  a machine is able to perform the human-like task of driving a car in real traffic.

Likewise, ACTFL® and Language Testing International® (LTI) have leveraged state-of-the-art machine learning technologies to build a model that would provide scores to Spanish AAPPL PW (ACTFL Assessment of Performance toward Proficiency in Languages Presentational Writing) responses just like ACTFL certified raters would do. Like with self-driving cars, the research team at ACTFL and LTI trained the machine to perform the task of a certified human rater by (1) compiling thousands of data points of actual test responses and rater scores, (2) using software to process these data, and (3) applying machine learning techniques to find patterns to optimize the machine scoring performance.

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Language Is a Business Asset: Why HR and Talent Acquisition Teams Are Integrating Language Proficiency Testing – LTI Blog

HR language screening tools

In today’s competitive talent landscape, language is more than a communication skill, it’s a business asset that directly impacts hiring quality, employee performance, and organizational risk. As HR and Talent Acquisition professionals face growing demands for stronger communication standards across industries, the need to verify bilingual talent through objective language proficiency testing has never been more essential.

Organizations operating in global, multilingual, or customer-facing environments increasingly rely on ACTFL® language proficiency assessments to ensure that candidates and employees possess the communication skills required for safety, compliance, service quality, and operational performance.

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